


Edicts

by historymiss



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short drabbles about Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard, exploring what might have made her who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Edicts

Meredith will always believe that most beautiful sight in all her life was the Templars who took her sister away. She can still recall the terror she felt, crouching in that house, her parents dead and the thing wearing Amelia's twisted flesh like a new suit of clothes calling out to her in a mockery of a voice she once knew.

Not that she would ever admit this, of course. Some things go too far even for a knight-commander, and Meredith knows that this is somewhat sick. Still, though, she remembers their armour blazing silver in the sun, the golden crest shining with light. It was like the sunrise, the the dawn after a night of darkness and terror. 

Meredith does not like to remove her own armour for this very reason. It keeps her safe against the dark.

\---

Meredith?

She cannot close her eyes, because if she does the darkness will swallow her.

Meredith? Come out now. Your sister wants you.

Silence. A peal of laughter.

Alright. I lied. I want you. It's so very lonely out here now.

Meredith holds her breath as the demon walks past, and the magic does not touch her.

\--

Kirkwall is a city drowning in itself, in the mass of humanity that calls these borrowed streets home. They're all immigrants here. Even Meredith, who was born just a few short miles away from Kirkwall, cannot truly call the city home.

The village where she grew up is gone, now. Nobody wanted to resettle there. Not after what happened. The villagers Amelia killed have no memorial, just a few bronze plaques in the Chantry and some fresh flowers when meredith finds the time (which is not often). She passed through where it used to be, once, the empty buildings half-tumbled down and forgotten. 

During that year when everything falls down Orsino tells her, in the heat of the moment, that she does not understand what it is to have her family ripped away. 

She stares him down, lyrium-blue eyes hard and bright as the winter sky, and says nothing.

The simple truth of the matter is that Meredith Stannard understands this all too well.

\--

You must always protect your baby sister, father had said. Your Amelia has a very special gift from the Maker. 

Meredith nodded like she understood, but she didn't. Not then. Only when she saw her parents lie to the Chantry, her sister hiding in the basement until the Templars passed, did she really see. And only when she uses those secret places herself, hiding from the demon for days, does she understand.

In later years, she becomes an expert in finding mages. There is a certain satisfaction to it, the reveal like a trick in itself. Pulling back the door, the sack, the cloth that hides them is a moment of triumph, or of banishment. The irony, such as it is, is lost on her. Meredith has unlearned the trick of seeing yourself in another's face- but the memory still clings like cobwebs. 

\--

They give her a crown when she becomes Knight-Commander. A crown and a hood, to make a leader. It sat on Guylian's head, once, though not when he hung in the Gallows. It will pass from her own soon enough. 

There was a moment, in that cold hour before dawn on the day they stormed the Viscount's Keep, that Meredith Stannard doubted herself. But Guylian had been a good man. A decent man, a better Knight-Commander than this stinking city deserved. So she had fought, and won the day, and never listened to doubt again, for what is doubt but the seed of defeat?

Circumstance leads her back to these moments, again and again, as constant as the sunrise. Storming the Keep. Fighting an abomination that talks to her with a familiar voice. It is a song, repeated phrases of the same pattern, the Maker's great design.

The idol shows her this and much more.

\--

The sword is an ugly thing. It needs to be. Meredith never trusted the beautiful things of this world. They're fleeting: they fade, or deceive. Too often things are too good to be true. 

It is only beautiful in one way; When Meredith holds the blade up to her face, she can hear it sing.

Amelia had sung once. The Templars sing in their congregations. The mages sing- hushed, rebellious things to be snuffed out. Kirkwall is a city of songs, she can feel it in her bones. 

When the song becomes too much, the power thrumming through her body with a force and energy like nothing she has ever known, Meredith falls back on the simplest song she knows, the one that two sisters had song side by side in a little village not far from Kirkwall, before the city swallowed both of them whole.

"Blessed are those who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter."


End file.
